Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren is wasting no time in getting down to business. In a blog for The HuffingtonPost on Thursday, she wrote that all the things she wants to do for the people of Massachusetts will never get done “if we can’t get up-or-down votes in the Senate.” Any Senator can use the filibuster against a measure to which he/she objects and bring the chamber’s business “to a screeching halt.”

Current Senate rules allow a senator, or a series of senators, to continue speaking on the topic of their choice for as long as they want unless three-fifths of the members (60 out of a 100) vote to bring the discussion to an end. Warren was the proposed target of a Republican filibuster in 2011 when it appeared that President Obama was going to nominate her to head the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Forty-five senators pledged to filibuster any nominee to head the agency because they objected to its existence, and the President backed off. (Now, they have to deal with Warren as a Senator who is willing to tackle both filibuster reform and banking reform from within. File that under “unintended consequences.”)